


five times jim kissed his crew (and it mattered), and one time he kissed spock (and it Mattered)

by MakeTheMoon



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, M/M, Not a soulmate AU, utter fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-19
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-12 21:12:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17475053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MakeTheMoon/pseuds/MakeTheMoon
Summary: "If he believed in soulmates, he’d have grinned at this man who so clearly belonged with Jim."A 5 times fic that dabbles with soulmates and is mostly a bit silly. Jim loves his crew and his ship, and they love him.





	five times jim kissed his crew (and it mattered), and one time he kissed spock (and it Mattered)

**Author's Note:**

> It doesn't really matter, but I do think of this as between 2009 and Into Darkness. Also I just can't help but believe Bones is Jim's platonic soulmate, so this is almost Jim/Bones as much as it's Jim/Spock.

**1\. Bones**

Jim had always heard that when you meet “The One,” you’d know. There’d be an instant connection, a spark, maybe not love at first sight, but certainly infatuation and affection at first sight - and what was love if not infatuation and affection?

So when he met Bones (McCoy, Leonard McCoy) on that shuttle, met this confusing, angry doctor who Hated Space but was Pursuing Space, he felt an undeniable, instant connection. It wasn’t infatuation. It wasn’t affection. But there was a connection.   
  
If he believed in soulmates, he’d have grinned at this man who so clearly belonged with Jim.

They were assigned dorm rooms, and it took only a month for Jim to learn he couldn’t handle his roommate. Gary Mitchell was equal parts slutty and intelligent, and Jim figured that’s exactly why he hated him - too close for comfort. Each dorm room should only have one slutty and intelligent occupant, and Jim had to be that person.   
  
Three days later the acceptance of his appeal was pushed into his mail slot, new room number printed at the top of the page - Room 403. McCoy.   
  
It was perfect. He loved Bones. Bones was intelligent (but not slutty) and belligerent and hilarious. He studied as much as Jim, would understand his need for coffee, and they’d never bring the same girl home two weeks apart.   
  
Plus, he was still pretty sure Bones was his soulmate. They hadn’t gotten there yet, but Jim spent a good 20 minutes at lunch one day studying Bones’ face - he hadn’t shaved in a few days, was clearly tired from his work at the clinic, and he was stabbing his chicken with more ferocity than it deserved. But he was attractive, Jim couldn’t deny that. Strong, broad shoulders under his medical uniform, pretty eyes, and beautiful, work-worn hands. Yeah, Jim could see them together.   
  
Later, in their room after stumbling back from the bar, after Bones had had a terrible day at work and Jim had had two exams that were worth way too much of his final grade, they found themselves on the couch, some holovid on but neither of them paying attention, both nearly asleep slumped against each other.   
  
Jim looked up at Bones, his nose nuzzling into the side of Bones’ neck, and he watched his chest rise a little quicker, watched his hand twitch on his thigh. Jim did it again, nuzzled closer, felt the stubble against his face.   
  
He lifted his head and kissed the side of Bones’s mouth, lifted a hand to cup the side of his face and turn it towards himself, kissed him for real. Bones sighed into his mouth, Jim teethed at his lip, and they both let out a soft, barely audible noise. Jim’s eyes opened straight into Bones’, and for a moment they stared at each other, connected at the lips, breathing into each other.   
  
Simultaneously they pulled back an inch. Bones cleared his throat. Jim nodded.   
  
They never kissed again. They never talked about it again, either.

*  
  
**2\. Uhura**

“Enter,” Kirk said, looking unseeingly into the screen on his desk. There was only so much paperwork he could do before he started dozing off or zoning out, and evidently he had hit that point about 10 minutes before.   
  
“Captain, Jim, I wanted to speak with you,” Uhura said in a soft voice. When he looked at her, she was standing almost at attention, the illusion broken by the way her right thumb was rubbing across all the other fingers.   
  
There wasn’t much that would bring her to his quarters at 2100. He turned off the screen, shoved his pile of PADDs to the side, and gestured to the other chair in the room, across the desk.   
  
He watched her walk, cautiously, toward him, but she didn’t sit. She leaned one hip against the desk, that fidgety right hand leaning hard against the smooth wood. He raised his eyebrows and lifted his hand, palm up, asking her to go ahead.   
  
Her mouth opened, then closed. She looked around, at him, at his desk, at his walls, his books. Then she leaned down, that fidgety right hand suddenly steady as she ran it through his hair, resting at the back of his head, and she kissed him, so softly. More softly than he’d ever been kissed. He felt undeserving. He’d been nothing but brash to her, hitting on her the first time they met and only slacking off after her and Spock got together.   
  
He opened his mouth, let her in, met her tongue just as softly. He cradled her hips as he stood, fingers tightening when she moaned from the back of her throat, when her back hit the desk as he turned her.   
  
He thought of Spock, knew Uhura wouldn’t cheat on him, knew they must have broken up.   
  
“Uhura,” he muttered, questioning, mouth still against hers, fingers tightening again to punctuate the word.   
  
She sighed, lowered her head to his shoulder, hands on his upper arms. “I knew this was a bad idea.”   
  
“You don’t usually have those.”   
  
“No. I don’t.” She looked at him and smiled, a crooked, broken smile, a smile that didn’t reach her eyes but was at least something.   
  
“Alright, I know I’ve been hitting on you obnoxiously for, oh, three years now? Four?” she rolled her eyes, “this isn’t what you want. If there’s anyone who knows that, it’s me. If there’s anyone who knows that more than me, I want to meet that poor fucker,” she rolled her eyes again, but snorted and slapped his arm. His heart broke when he heard her sniffle.   
  
“You know what’s worse than being broken up with? Being broken up with by a Vulcan. He was so logical about it. I don’t know what I expected. He managed to make his emotions sound like logic-”   
  
“Emotions?”   
  
“-he does have them, you know.” It wasn’t a question. He shut his mouth. “I guess I came to you because… you’re the most emotional person on this stupid ship.”   
  
“You get a pass this time, but if I ever hear you call the love of my life ‘stupid’ again, I’ll have to make use of one of the airlocks.” This time she punched him in the shoulder, but laughed a real laugh, so he considered it a win. “Now git - unless you want to stay. We can, I don’t know… what are we supposed to do? Watch a holovid? Make popcorn?”   
  
There have been times in his life that he’s regretted a decision. Not many, but they’re there. At that moment, he regretted how they met. He thought, maybe, in another universe, in another time, they could have met under different circumstances, him less of a dick, her with nothing to prove, and maybe they could have been something. He loved her, and if he believed in soulmates, she’d be a pretty good candidate.   
  
What they ended up doing was sitting crossways in his bed, under the covers, a holovid on his personal PADD with popcorn between them - laughing when they were supposed to, groaning at the bad acting, maybe even a sniffle or two at the end.   
  
They talked, she vented about Spock - there was no malice in her words, no sharpness, just frustration and sadness.   
  
Eventually, Uhura fell asleep against his shoulder. He carefully slid out from under her, laid her down onto the bed and pulled the blanket over her. She woke up enough to look at him, sadness and gratitude evident equally in her expression.   
  
He took the couch in the other room, thinking over all the things they could have been.

*

**3\. Sulu**

Four weeks. Four weeks they had spent in that room, that jail, that dungeon. They had escaped countless times, and by the fifth time Kirk had realised it was a maze, a puzzle. So they had drawn up a map. They couldn’t figure out why they weren’t being overtly punished or tortured. They were given just enough food to sate the hunger pangs, but not enough to feel full. They were given enough water to address their dry lips, but not enough to stop the headaches.   
  
Their captors were playing with them. They had started to feel like mice in a lab, chasing after some button, some door, some lever. They’d go down one hallway that they were sure they had gone down before, but it looked completely different. The map didn’t seem to help them, as it seemed that the two days between each “escape” the puzzle was reset. Kirk had started to think they were being allowed to escape, and that his own skills had nothing to do with it.   
  
Finally, Sulu, brilliant, beautiful Sulu had slammed his hand against the dirty wall, turned to Kirk sitting on the bed and snapped his fingers.   
  
“It’s… Oh my god, I don’t know how we didn’t figure this out.”   
  
After four weeks, Kirk couldn’t feel overly guilty about not being more enthusiastic. They thought they “had it” every couple days for weeks.   
  
“No seriously, Jim, I just… come here, look at this,” he pointed at their map. Their map that they had crumpled and thrown into the corner a week ago. It had been useless. “We’ve been assuming we’re in the middle. What if we need to  _ get _ to the middle?”   
  
“Huh.”   
  
Which brought them to an entirely different looking set of tunnels, all blue and green walls and bright yellow floors that Sulu swore up and down were at a shallow incline. Jim didn’t disagree, but he didn’t agree either. He was tired. He was hungry. He was going to die here.   
  
Then there was a red door, and Jim thought,  _ it can’t be that easy. It can’t be. _   
  
It wasn’t. They opened the door and there were guards inside, of course there were guards inside, but Sulu grabbed a chair and ripped the leg off, far too swiftly for someone who should be just as hungry, just as exhausted as Kirk, and started using it as a… as a sword. So Kirk threw some punches, kicked some knees, and when he took a breath the chaos was quieted, just the sounds of Sulu and his own breathing filling the room.   
  
Sulu marched over to the console in the centre of the room, swept his eyes across the screen and the rainbow of backlit buttons. Kirk stood back, exhausted but at least feeling like they’d done something that day. He’s about to grab Sulu’s elbow and turn him around, head back to their room to get some sleep when Sulu popped open a plexiglas box and pushed the giant red button underneath it.   
  
Kirk held his breath. Sulu held his gaze. They waited. There was no sound; no footsteps, no shouting, no crumbling walls.   
  
After a few seconds, Kirk let out his breath at the same time he felt his feet tingle. He stared at them. Watched as the white, glittering swirls made their way up his legs, past his hips and torso. He didn’t quite understand, so he looked to Sulu who was already gone, and then suddenly Sulu was there again collapsed against the transporter pad on the Enterprise, Bones running through the door, Spock and Scotty behind the console, both buzzing with excitement and disbelief.   
  
Kirk still didn’t understand, but the tension left his body in one big wave, starting from his head and working its way down as he collapsed, too, next to Sulu. Sulu who was grinning and laughing and pushing Bones’ hands away and alive and on the Enterprise and a genius. Kirk crawled his way over, leaned against the wall, grabbed Sulu’s beautiful face in both hands and kissed him, hard.   
  
Sulu laughed the whole time, just as delirious as Kirk felt, and slapped him on the back as Kirk pulled back.   
  
“I’m going to promote the shit out you as soon I wake up, Sulu,” he said, grin still plastered to his face. He pressed his head down onto Sulu’s arm and drifted off as Bones checked them over.

*

**4\. Chekov**

The Enterprise had a great library. The Enterprise had a great everything, she was top of the line. Her servers were full of information, information that helped the crew on their missions and when they were bored.   
  
Chekov found out about Valentine’s Day because the Enterprise had amazing information storage.   
  
He had hung little paper hearts all over the ship, threw some little red glitter around like confetti in the recreation rooms, and now was working on the bridge. He maybe went a little overboard on the bridge, but Kirk wasn’t one to rain on anyone’s parade.   
  
It was covered in little red hearts, big red hearts, teddy bears, confetti. It was everywhere. Kirk was going to be washing glitter out of his hair for a month.   
  
He couldn’t be sure where Chekov got his information, exactly - if it was the online encyclopedia, or some first hand knowledge, because the next thing he knew, he had a too-young Russian nearly in his lap in the chair planting a quick kiss on his lips. Chekov was turned around to Sulu in two seconds flat, then to Uhura, and with the way this was carrying out Kirk was fighting his disappointment that Spock wasn’t on their shift this week. It wasn’t that he wanted Spock to feel uncomfortable, he just - he just really wanted to see his face with an armful of adorable Russian.

*

**5\. Scotty**

It was chaos. It was absolute, utter chaos.   
  
Spock went missing on an away mission. When they located him, he was so far down a hole, literally, that the Enterprise couldn’t get a lock on him to beam him up. His life-scanner was fritzing out, so one minute it would say he was alive, the next dead, the next alive again. Kirk was on the bridge, waiting for Uhura’s magic, waiting for her to make contact with him, waiting to see his face on his view-screen.   
  
That never happened.   
  
Instead, it was Scotty’s voice in his ear, yelling, “I think I’ve go’ him, Captain, bu’ I need more hands!”   
  
Kirk was out of the chair before the sentence was finished, urging the turbolift to speed the fuck up, and running through the hallways of the Enterprise. He squeezed through the door to the transporter room before it was fully opened and under the console before Scotty noticed he was on the way.   
  
“What do you need, Scotty,  _ tell me what to do _ ,” and if that was desperation in his voice, he tried not to think too hard about it.   
  
What followed was more chaos, but at least this was chaos Kirk could manage, chaos he could control. He knew this chaos. Scotty would shout orders at him, he’d carry out those orders, and before he was finished Scotty would shout another one at him.   
  
It took a few minutes, but Scotty finally said, “yes! There he is!”   
  
Kirk flew up from the floor, held the console together while Scotty started the process and beamed Spock back aboard.   
  
He appeared and disappeared and reappeared and Kirk was hysterical. He was sure Scotty was hysterical as well if the laughter that bubbled out of him when Spock was whole on the transporter pad was any indication.   
  
Kirk stepped forward as Spock took to his knees, breathing deeply, but was stopped by Scotty grasping his arm to turn him around, holding his face in both hands and kissing him, hard. He left with a shout, arm raised in the air, calling for medical all the while, and Kirk turned back to see Spock sitting on the pad, hurt and frightened, but with amusement dancing in his Human eyes.

*

**+1. Spock**

Their lives were insane. He knew this. He knew this before he signed up for Starfleet all those years ago. He and his crew had been through so much, between school and Nero and countless missions that ended in near-death for so many, and actual death for more than Jim was comfortable with.   
  
He knew it would be that way, and he wouldn’t want to change it, not ever. He didn’t regret things often, told himself it made him the person he was today because of the mistakes he had to make. They were his mistakes, and no one could take them away from him. He had to own them or he’d spend his time in the past, instead of the here and now.   
  
So he finds himself in his quarters across a small table from his First Officer. As Spock watches the board, takes his time to weigh each move he could make, Jim watches Spock. The way his mouth twitches as each thought passes him by, the steady way his hands are sitting on the top of the table, the way his hair is just slightly out of place from when Jim had ruffled it earlier. Spock hadn’t fixed it, which was new. Spock always fixed it when Jim inevitably knocked something out of place.   
  
His eyes are deep, concentrating on the game, Human on his very Vulcan face. Jim wonders if he were fully Human, would his eyes look quite so expressive? Is it the contrast with the Vulcan eyebrows and cheekbones, or are they just that full of emotion?   
  
Jim thinks he might be about to make one of his mistakes, but it’s a mistake he’s willing to own. The biggest mistake of his life, maybe, but not making it isn’t an option anymore.   
  
When all your options are taken away, it’s not a mistake anymore, right?   
  
He takes a breath, pushed the board to the side and leans across the table.   
  
For a moment, Spock follows the board almost as if he doesn’t even realise it’s moving, still deciding on his next move.   
  
But then he looks at Jim and doesn’t even look confused. Just expectant. Like he trusts that Jim isn’t being a complete moron, like he trusts that Jim’s got a good reason for pushing their game away in the very middle of it.   
  
Jim takes another breath, says, “I’m just gonna-” and leans the extra foot forward to press his lips to Spock’s.   
  
There is no hesitation.   
  
Spock kisses back, lifting his steady hands from the table to cup Jim’s jaw in one and run the other from his hand to his shoulder, squeezing. Jim sighs into it and pulls back to his new favourite sight - Spock’s eyes closed, lips parted and wet, completely relaxed.   
  
When they met, there had been no immediate infatuation or affection. But there had been a spark.   
  
If Jim believed in soulmates, he’d be pretty sure he found his.


End file.
